Jan S. (1973) and Ruby Krouwer Fund

Dr. Jan Krouwer, PhD ’73 and his wife, Ruby, have established the Jan S. (1973) and Ruby S. Krouwer fund to support graduate students in the Department of Chemistry.

Jan, a native of New York, got his BS from Tufts University followed by a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at MIT under the late Professor Glenn Berchtold. After MIT, Jan was a post-doctoral fellow in enzymology at the New England Medical Center under Dr. Bernard Babior and then joined Technicon Instruments. While serving as a manager of an analytical clinical chemistry group he developed an interest in data analysis and statistics.

From 1984 to 2001, he was at Bayer Diagnostics (and its previously acquired companies of Chiron Diagnostics, Ciba Corning, and Corning Medical), and was the Director of the Evaluations and Reliability Department, an internal consulting group that he created and staffed.

In 2001, he established Krouwer Consulting. As a consultant, he solves medical device quality problems, using his experience in statistics and reliability including helping companies get FDA approval.

When asked why he had established the Krouwer fund, his reply was straightforward. “I have always been extremely impressed with the caliber of professors carrying out teaching and research in the Department of Chemistry and this is my way of giving back to the department and enabling other students to have the superior training that I did. Without a doubt, having a MIT PhD was instrumental to my successful career. I know education is expensive and I am pleased to assist.”

When Jan is not working, he is an avid windsurfer and an instrument rated pilot who flies a Cirrus SR22.